War without Mercy by John Dower

War without Mercy by John Dower

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD * AN AMERICAN BOOK AWARD FINALIST * A monumental history that has been hailed by The New York Times as "one of the most original and important books to be written about the war between Japan and the United States."

In this monumental history, Professor John Dower reveals a hidden, explosive dimension of the Pacific War--race--while writing what John Toland has called "a landmark book ... a powerful, moving, and evenhanded history that is sorely needed in both America and Japan."
 
Drawing on American and Japanese songs, slogans, cartoons, propaganda films, secret reports, and a wealth of other documents of the time, Dower opens up a whole new way of looking at that bitter struggle of four and a half decades ago and its ramifications in our lives today. As Edwin O. Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan, has pointed out, this book offers "a lesson that the postwar generations need most ... with eloquence, crushing detail, and power."

John W. Dower is the author of Accepting Defeat, which won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, as well as War Without Mercy, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Cultures of War, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is a history professor emeritus at MIT. He is the founder and codirector of the online Visualizing Cultures project, which was founded at MIT in 2002 and is committed to the presentation of image-driven scholarship on East Asia in the modern world. He has written numerous books and articles about Japan and the United States in war and peace. He is a resident of Boston, Massachusetts.